


Penance

by whichstiel



Series: Raised you from perdition [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Grief, Guilt, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Penance - Freeform, Saving Dean, Spoiler alert: they never stay dead for long., angel traps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 18:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8068159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Dean dies in the woods.Rinse. Repeat.





	

Blood bubbles from Dean’s mouth but both he and Castiel ignore it. Castiel reaches out his hand, two fingers extended, and lays them on Dean’s forehead. Dean closes his eyes. He knows the routine, knows the pain will soon be just another memory to bleed into all the others. Nothing happens. Grace flows from Castiel’s fingertips as he presses them against Dean’s grimy forehead. But Dean still bleeds into the cold dirt.

“I don’t-“ Castiel frowns, his usual impassive mask slipping. “You’re still bleeding.”

Dean gasps wetly in response.

Castiel presses his fingers one more time into Dean’s skin. His eyes glow blue in the half light under the trees. He looks down at Dean’s chest and stomach, which took the worst of the clawed attack. Dean’s shirt is still shredded and beneath it blood wells up from deep, unhealed cuts. Castiel looks in desperation at the unidentified monster lying curled on its side next to its lonely mountain cabin and then he rips off his coat and suit jacket - the cleanest things around - and presses them to Dean’s chest. He takes both of Dean’s hands and wraps them over the coat. “Pressure,” he commands. Dean presses trembling hands against the rips in his chest and nods. His face is gray.

“Cas,” Dean says breathlessly. “Your mojo. All fucked up.”

“Nothing’s wrong with my mojo,” Castiel says shortly. “Something about the monster. I can’t heal those wounds. Dean I’m going to have to get you to a hospital.”

Castiel scoops Dean up in his arms, rolling him so that the coat is sandwiched between his and Dean’s chest. As awkward as it is, Castiel is pretty sure it’s more pressure on the wounds than Dean was managing. “Whoa, hey, Cas.” Dean protests weakly as Castiel carries him to the Impala.

Awkwardly Castiel works a finger under the door handle and opens it. Dean half rolls, half scoots into the backseat, collapsing along its length with a long groan. Castiel gently moves Dean onto his side and fishes out the Impala’s keys before slamming the rear door and running around to the driver’s side.

The car won’t start. In the back, Dean tries to sit up. “Doin’ it wrong,” he grunts.

“Dean, I’m not ‘doing it wrong’” Cas says, the first feathers of panic tickling into his gut. He tries again and again before looking back at Dean. “Okay, I’ve got to get you patched up.”

Dean winces. “Kit’s in the trunk.”

Standing over the trunk, Castiel checks again for a cell phone signal. Nothing. He pulls out the surgery “kit”, a bottle of hard liquor, a jacket of needles, and floss. They’re losing light outside but he’s still got angelic vision on his side. Rather than move Dean again and watch more blood gush from his wounds, he crams himself into the backseat and gets to work. He’ll help Dean clean the car himself when they get out of this.

Much later Castiel pulls back. Dean’s eyelashes flutter against his cheek. The man is unfortunately accustomed to intense pain but there’s something in these wounds that seems worse than usual. Aside from the worrying fact that he can’t heal these injuries, Dean was reduced to a low, helpless keening by the time Castiel finished stitching his wounds closed. It’s like the monster bears a curse in its skin. Whatever it is, it’s a curse more powerful than Heaven, or at least more powerful than a grounded angel.

The car still won’t start. Castiel removes lighter fluid and a book of cheap motel matches from the trunk and torches the monster - both to conceal evidence and hopefully destroy whatever magic lingers in the beast. In the backseat Dean huffs short, painful breaths. His eyes are open just a slit, enough to somewhat calm the dread bubbling in Castiel’s ribcage. “We’re going to have to walk,” he tells him. Dean is too weak to protest as he is bundled once again into Castiel’s arms, head lolling on his shoulder.

A waning gibbous moon hangs in the sky, outlining the trees. There’s a small bedroom community nested along the highway a little ways down from the fire road. There will be vehicles and hopefully some semblance of a cell signal once they get out of this secluded divot in the Sierras. “Just a few hours,” Castiel huffs. “And we’ll get you help. It’s all going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”

Dean grunts. Castiel thinks it may have been an attempt to laugh. It’s a reaction, anyway, so Castiel keeps talking. He tells him about the hunt for Lucifer, about the state of affairs in Heaven. He tells Dean about a cat he rescued off the highway. How it spent two days in his car before bailing at a motel outside of Reno.

“Friggin. Cats.” Dean gets out and Castiel smiles.

“I ate pie at the diner you recommended,” Castiel says.

“Mmmm.”

“I tried the pecan but I think my favorite was mixed berry. Surprisingly complex.” It had been, too. At Dean’s suggestion he was trying to enjoy his vessel. While sensations were different from what he remembered as a human he found there was still a lot to enjoy.

“Crap.”

“Mixed berry is not crap.” Castiel tries to chuckle, to keep up the appearance that Dean’s situation isn’t balanced on a knife edge. But the truth is, he can feel Dean ebbing away from him. Castiel would run if he didn’t think it would kill Dean faster.

“Look at you,” Dean whispers.

“Dean, don’t try to talk.”

“Saving me. ‘Gain.”

“Always.”

“Saved me from Hell. Eight years ago.” Dean shudders and Castiel presses him closer. “Walked into that barn. Fuckin’ light show, man.”

“Shhhh. Dean. That wasn’t on purpose.”

Dean wheezes.

“It wasn’t! I hadn’t possessed a vessel in centuries. My grace was-” He frowns at the memory. “Maybe I was still affected by Hell as well. I don’t know.” The woods are quiet and the moon illuminates patches of road in bright pools. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“Pssssh.”

“As always, you value yourself too little.” He takes a deep breath and then briefly presses his cheek against Dean’s forehead. “The best thing I’ve ever done,” he repeats.

Castiel finally starts up the final climb to the ridge top and pauses to shift Dean in his arms. He reaches for his phone and pulls it out so he can monitor the bars. The moment he gets a signal…

He feels it just before it happens. Dean’s jaw goes slack and his breath rattles. “Dean!” Castiel shouts. “Stay with me, damn it.” He shakes Dean and the man’s head lolls. Castiel starts to run, trying to be smooth, trying to be fast. His grace curls desperately from his fingers, held at bay by whatever is in Dean’s skin. Dean’s shoulder presses into his chest, a point of fire between them all through this long night. It goes cold. Dean becomes horribly, grotesquely, still.

“No. No!” Castiel runs full bore now, nothing to lose as he sprints up the mountain. His phone beeps feebly as it registers a faint cell signal. Castiel grunts as tears - his first in any incarnation - try to overtake him. He wrestles control over his body once again and makes the call, directing the human rescuers to the side of the highway near the trailhead.

Dean dies a bare fifteen minutes away from the highway. In the distance, sirens wail.

The night is so very cold. Castiel clasps him close to his chest and begins to contemplate bargains.

The world disappears for a second, or a century. Then…

Blood bubbles from Dean’s mouth but both he and Castiel ignore it. Castiel reaches out his hand, two fingers extended, and lays them on Dean’s forehead. Dean closes his eyes. He knows the routine, knows the pain will soon be just another memory to bleed into all the others. Nothing happens. Grace flows from Castiel’s fingertips as he presses them against Dean’s grimy forehead. But Dean still bleeds into the cold dirt.

* * * 

“Fuck. Fuck. Shitting fuck.” Dean’s steady stream of swearing is like ambient music filling the dusty bookshop as he gently probes at the gold disc stuck to Cas’s forehead. Beneath the disc Cas’s eyes twitch as though he’s dreaming.

“Dean,” Sam says from behind a set of dusty shelves. “That isn’t helping. Cas is stable. Help me search. I don’t know where that alarm bell goes off but I doubt we have much time.”

Dean growls but Sam has a point. He places his palm against Cas’s lax cheek. “Be right back. Hang in there, okay? Fucking Metatron.” Narrowing his eyes, he looks around the bookshop. This shop was one of Metatron’s old haunts back when he was an angel hiding on Earth. It was one of the places Metatron had dragged Cas to on his magical mystery grace hunt a few years ago. It was here that Cas theorized they might find the archangel shackles, based on a cryptic map they’d found in Metatron's (a.k.a. Marv’s) old apartment.

The bookshop is lined, floor to ceiling, with tightly packed shelves full of old dusty hardbacks and paperbacks. Every cover, even the red and pink tower of romance, is faded so the room is awash in gray. There literally seems to be no reading material they won’t sell, or try to sell. On the way in, Dean noticed a shelf of old porn magazines. He’d slapped Cas on the chest and chortled, “might have to do a little shopping later.” Cas had rolled his eyes and hefted his blade a little higher. The look said, _I will stab you if you don’t get serious_. Dean smirked and raised his gun again, following Cas through the maze of shelves.

“Shackles,” Dean muttered. “Big ass shackles.” Cas explained once how Metatron hid his grace inside of a book but looking around, Dean doesn’t see any books that might be large enough to hold the heavy silver manacles they’d seen illustrated on a scroll back at the bunker. He raises his weapon and stalks down the narrow stacks, peering at the ceiling and the floor for any seams that might reveal a hatch or trap door. God forbid they have to start tearing down books because they probably really don't have time for that. Finally, in the self help section, he finds a gap in the flooring. He works a knife between the fraying carpet edges. The blade easily slips several inches into the gap. “Sam? Might’ve found something.”

Sam’s footsteps pound through the shop and he’s hovering over Dean’s shoulder in seconds. “Could be booby trapped,” Sam huffs.

“Yeah, but angel booby trapped probably. Like whatever got Cas. That fucking disc went right past me and straight for him.” Dean starts to pry at the board with his eyes narrowed warily. “Maybe you should move back. Just in case.” The board flies up revealing a shallow hole beneath the floor, not even deep enough to be a crawl space. Dean brushes aside old newspaper insulation to uncover a long box that gleams when the light hits it. “Yahtzee. Okay, let’s get Ca-” He freezes. At the front of the store there's a slight jangle. Sam instantly swivels and makes his way back towards the entrance, gun up and ready for whatever security force might appear - human or angel.

Dean pulls the box out and tucks it under his arm, hoping it holds the manacles. If it isn’t, they’re screwed anyway. There’s a hush now at the front of the store that is way too quiet. If the noise Dean had heard had been Cas waking up, they’d be talking right now. Excessive quiet means Sam’s hunting and whatever is on the other side of the door is hunting as well.

By the front desk Dean raises his brows to Sam who mouths ‘angels’ and points to the security feed on a little TV behind the desk. Yup, heather-gray suits, constipated expressions, and a total and complete idiocy around technology since they gathered directly in front of the camera. He and Sam had spotted the camera from across the street, for Christ’s sake. Sam slices open his forearm and begins to paint on the banishing sigil.

“The fuck?” Dean hisses, gesturing to Cas who is still out cold behind the desk.

“Get him out of here. I’ll distract them and activate this once they’re inside.”

Dean hesitates a moment. Leaving Sam to face a trio of beefy angels goes against just about every bone in his body but it’s the only plan right now. Who knows what a banishing sigil would do to Cas. Dean sets the box on the counter and bends over to hoist Cas in a fireman’s carry.

“Fucking hell,” gasps Dean. “What does he eat? Bricks?” He staggers upright and heads to the employee area in the back. Dean opens the door and scopes out the alley but it looks quiet. Just trash cans and the back doorways of businesses. He steps through and hurries his way down the alley and away from the waiting sigil.

For once, their plan goes off perfectly. The angels get blasted to the far corners of the globe, Sam grabs the box, and the Winchesters stuff themselves and their comatose angel into the Impala and drive like hell back to Kansas.

 * * * 

Cas lays like a corpse across the back seat for the entire drive back to the bunker. If it weren’t for the almost imperceptible motion of his chest it would be pretty easy to think he was dead. Looking at him in the rearview makes Dean shiver, like watching one of his own nightmares. But he can’t not look, all the same.

At the bunker they have the leisure to study the archangel manacles. Or, that’s the way Sam puts it - as though he and Dean were simply on vacation with an interesting old artifact. He’d cleared his throat and shoved his nose back in his book when he saw Dean’s face.

 _Weekend at Bernie’s_ , Dean thinks later as he frowns over at Cas. Well, dude would look good in a pair of shades.

Cas is lying on the couch they’d moved into the war room, the gold disc still firmly attached to his face like an obscene reverse halo. Papers and books are spread out around Cas - on the couch cushions, on the floor. The disc is covered in some Enochian writing, and something else they haven’t been able to identify yet. The Enochian is relatively easy to translate. It reads something like _labyrinthine cage_ , which gives them some obvious avenues to pursue while trying to figure out what else is written on the disc. Dean is hoping for removal instructions or at the very least a fancy name, like the _Golden Disc of Mount Doom_ , that they can use to look up more specific lore. If he ever ends up inventing some mystical weapon he is totally writing the instructions, in plain English, straight onto the damn thing.

Looking up “angel cage” is turning up a lot of naughty underwear shoots which under other circumstances Dean would appreciate. But the internet has no leads. The bunker library has no leads. At one point his mind drifts to Kevin with his Heaven-ordained knack for language. Dean gives up for the night and drinks himself to oblivion.

Dean sleeps at the library table, or sometimes rolled up in a blanket on the floor next to Cas. Just in case he wakes up.

 * * * 

“Okay,” Sam frowns at the minefield of papers spread across the table. “I think I’ve pieced together a loose translation.”

“Yeah?” Dean’s head shoots up from a thick book titled _Weaponry and food customs from the lower Nile_. (Where he has been getting absolutely nowhere…except a little hungry.)

“So the outer circle basically says it’s a trap. A kind of…box that buries you 'underground'. But obviously there’s some double meaning in this. I think it traps you in memories or dreams or something like that.”

Dean thinks about Cas’s eyes, constantly twitching under his eyelids, unceasing for days now. “No shit.”

Sam ignores him. “And this glyph here.” Sam points to a reproduction of a whirling star that’s a repeated motif on the disc. “I think this might mean angel. Like, this targets only angels. And I think the middle loop is basically saying that only the pure of heart will escape.”

“Well that’s bullshit,” Dean mutters. “Nobody’s better than Cas.”

Sam opens his mouth for a moment, eyes on Dean, then closes it again. Finally, he says. “Well, maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with goodness. I mean, how many times have you gotten trapped by your own guilt?”

It’s an uncomfortable question and Dean looks down at his hands. He shrugs.

Sam sighs. “I’m sorry, Dean. I’m just tired.”

“It’s fine, Sam. It’s not like it ain’t the truth. Cas learned from the best. Does it say anything about how to get it off?”

“Don’t you think I would have led with that, Dean?”

“Sammy. You know how you get, man. _Get this_ , there’s a rock that eagles have been shitting on for thousands of years. Oh yeah, and it’s haunted. I mean, you don’t exactly lead with the need to know.” Dean leans over the table and rubs his hands tiredly over his eyes. “Okay. So it makes sense that this is some kind of dream trap. But if it feeds off guilt, man.” He slumps a little. “If it feeds off guilt it ain’t ever coming off.”

Much later after Sam has gone to bed Dean closes his latest book and heads over to Cas. He settles himself on the floor and rests his head against the seat cushion. Cas’s quiet breathing fills him up and he takes a few minutes to just breathe in and out in solidarity.

“You can’t blame yourself, man,” Dean finally says. “I know. I’m the last one who should talk. But guilt will just take you down. Dismantle all the good in your life. You gotta shake this off, man. You gotta come back to me.” He settles his head against the cushion and allows his eyes to close. “You just gotta come back, man.”

 * * * 

Angels don’t get déja-vu. For the most part their thinking is too systemic and memories too sharp to confuse details or mistake one moment for another.

Castiel experiences intense déja-vu as he carries Dean through the moonlit woods. It isn’t until the trees grow bigger and older and red eyes glint from the shadows that he recognizes the situation for what it is: not real.

“I haven’t dreamed since I was human,” Castiel murmurs.

“Dreams’re shit anyway,” mumbles Dean from his shoulder.

Castiel sighs. “I’m sure you’ve had good dreams, Dean. You simply don’t remember them.” The only thing he can hear is the sound of his own shoes crunching along the gravel. Memory tickles at him like a persistent itch. He’s been here before, walking along this road with a severely injured Winchester in his arms. His roiling gut tells him it doesn’t end well. “I’m not supposed to dream.” He stops and cocks his head to one side. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Fight.”

Castiel looks down at Dean, who is still incredibly pale. He starts walking again. “You remember the fight. What about before that?”

Dean wheezes in reply.

“Okay, okay. It’s alright. Just rest,” Castiel soothes. He asks himself the question instead. The thing is, he remembers a very detailed lead up to this hunt. Sam and Mary are off helping Eileen. Castiel, hitting a dead end with Lucifer, agreed to meet up with Dean to investigate some mysterious camper deaths up in the California mountains. He remembers the motels, the long hours of driving, the welcoming hug from Dean outside of a gas station in the valley. It all seems very straightforward, but now that he’s picking at it, it feels two dimensional. Castiel is lost in probing the abstraction until Dean begins to die. And then he’s just lost.

This time Castiel recognizes the reset for what it is. He can’t help the few tears that escape down his cheek as he tries, again, for who knows how many times, to heal Dean.

Dean’s eyes widen at the sight and he reaches a bloody hand to wipe away a tear. “You can’t blame yourself, man,” he says before a deep groan of pain robs the rest from his lips.

 * * * 

Dean slams the mason jar on the table and stalks over to Cas. His fingers linger in the angel’s hair for a moment before he plucks one and brings it back, dropping it into the jar.

Sam watches all this with raised brows but as soon as the hair drops in and Dean begins swirling the mixture, he jumps up. “Dream root? Angels don’t even dream, Dean.”

“Well nothing else we’re finding out is fucking working.”

“Give it some time-”

“It’s been a week, Sam. A week.”

“So? He’s safe here, Dean. And he’s an angel now. His grace is keeping him alive. We’ve got time to do this right. Figure out the right way to get him out.”

“Bullshit we have time. You said yourself this is some kind of guilt fueled prison. He needs someone to get him out, man. Maybe he needs…” Dean pauses and rolls his eyes towards the ceiling for a moment, collecting himself. “Maybe he needs someone in there to forgive him.”

Dean feels himself blushing - not enough to be caught out in the golden lamp lit library. But the warmth is there in the tips of his ears. There are a lot of things he’s never told Sam, and guesses the same goes for Cas. He's seen Sam’s glances between the two of them as they dance around the painful incidents in their past. He knows Sam wonders but, thank god, he never pushes.

“Listen,” Sam says edging around the table. “Mom’ll be back soon. Maybe when she sees it something will ring a bell.”

“Sam, she said herself she never even knew angels were real until she met Cas. Why the hell would she know about some crazy angel trap?”

“Dean. All I’m asking is that you take a little more time. I mean, let’s say you do bust into Cas’s dream. What, are you both stuck in the prison now? A guilt prison? You’re not an angel, Dean, and you sure as hell can’t handle your own guilt.” Sam has almost rounded the chairs and Dean cups the mason jar close to his chest possessively. “Just. If you want to try, let me do it, okay?”

“I know you don’t get it, Sammy. But this is on me.” Dean chugs the tea brew down in three big gulps as Sam lunges for him.

Sam stares at him. “Dean, you…” He shakes his head. “You ass. I’m not going to knock you out, man. As far as I’m concerned you can just hang out until the tea wears off.”

But Dean sways on his feet. “Sam,” he says gently. “I ain’t an idiot.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Oh lord, you drugged yourself? Damn it, Dean.” Sam takes his arm and helps him over to a library chair. Dean pillows his head on his arms at the table and falls asleep.

 * * * 

Castiel had become so accustomed to the dreary narrative of the woods - a remnant of Purgatory, he thinks - that he’s swept away when the scenery finally changes.

He's on fire. And it’s delicious. The power surging through him is like nothing he’s ever experienced. At first, he thinks this is what his brothers and sisters spoke about when they reminisced about seeing God. It’s like there’s a sun in his chest. He is Ra, the sun god and from there it’s such a small step to God. He ascends to Heaven and destroys his brethren.

In Heaven he comes to himself in a field of bodies and the acrid shadows of wings marring the celestial plane. He clenches his fist as something within his ribcage bubbles with joy. Castiel turns and comes face to face with Dean.

* * * 

Dean tries to school his expression as he looks upon the vast field of slaughtered angels. Cas had described it to him in broad, guilty strokes. But he’d never stopped to imagine what scores of dead angels might look like. He snaps his gaze to Cas’s face, uncertain now that he’s here exactly what he should say to assuage the guilt or whatever that crap disc is feeding from.

“Hey, Cas,” he finally says. “I’m here man. And we’re going to get you out of this.”

Cas looks at him and smiles slightly as though they’re sharing a joke. “Millennia of wheeling over the spheres. Yet it always comes back to you, Dean,” he whispers and then raises his hand to cup Dean’s cheek.

* * * 

Castiel closes his fingers and makes a fist before making contact with Dean’s cheek. It’s what Naomi wants. He strikes fast, mercilessly, and Dean goes down, sprawled along the cold warehouse floor.

_In the real world, at the library table, Dean’s body jolts._

“Cas!” Dean gasps, rubbing his jaw and scooting along the floor. “It’s me!”

Castiel leans down and snags his shirt in his hand, hauling him up. He punches him again and hears a snap as Dean’s nose breaks. He pauses, Dean struggling in his hand, feet scrabbling against the floor, and he looks at his fist which already has a smear of blood on it. This is what Naomi was trying to teach him all along. He’s a mallet. A piston in a killing machine. There’s no room for family or will or want. As an angel, he doesn’t even have the capacity for these things. God didn’t make them, any of them, that way. Only the mission matters.

He shoots the blade from his sleeve and twirls it in his hand above Dean, whose eyes widen.

“It’s me, Cas. It’s really me. You’re trapped. This is a memory. Like that night in the crypt. You gotta snap out of it man.” Dean shakes his head as though trying to clear it and the panicked tone subsides and becomes suddenly, shockingly gentle. “I forgive you,” he says slowly. “I forgive you everything.”

Even before Purgatory demanded it, Castiel allowed himself to breathe. It was a pleasure of Earth, he’d discovered, and a way to feel like part of the sky. But after Naomi, he’d let most autonomic functions go. They weren’t necessary and like many things on Earth, they were a distraction against the mission. So when he feels his heart start to pound in his chest it is enough to give him pause. He lowers the blade.

Dean finds his footing and his fingers curl carefully around Castiel’s wrist.

The lights in the warehouse turn on, revealing the sea of dead Dean Winchesters and the one live man clenched in his fist. He frowns and cocks his head like he’s trying to hear a faint melody. “Dean?”

 * * * 

Dean doesn’t dare to look around any more than he already has, but what he’s seen - a field of dead bodies all startlingly familiar - makes him wary. He can’t fit the memory into anything Cas has told him about. If it’s a metaphor, like a dream, it’s still affecting Cas like it’s real. Cas’s eyes are wide, brows lifted in what he’s always fondly thought of as his ‘baby in a trench coat’ look. His breathing is too fast. Carefully, Dean strokes his finger along Cas’s wrist, massaging his forearm. He keeps his voice low like he’s talking to a spooked animal.

“Cas. You’re trapped in some kind of angel mind prison. I’m here to bust you out.”

“That’s not possible.” Cas shakes his head. “You’re back on Earth. I heard you praying. You’re back on Earth with Sam. This isn’t real. None of it is real.”

“Uh, that’s right,” Dean says, hope billowing in his chest. “None of this is real. We’re back on Earth and you’re trapped in your mind. You gotta let this crap go, man.”

Cas nods. “I should let this go. I should let it all go.”

“Alright, man. Alright. We’re gonna work through this, okay? As long as it takes.”

“As long as it takes,” Cas agrees. He moves so fast, Dean doesn’t have time to react. The angel blade slides into his stomach like he’s butter.

Dean would stagger back but the hold Cas has on him is too strong. He drops his hand from Cas’s wrist and clenches the wound. His fingers come away red and his shirt is red and back in the bunker library he suspects he may actually be dying. The pain of the wound, but mostly the pain of the stone look on Cas’s face robs him of words for a moment. Cas raises the sword and twirls it in his fingers to position it for a killing blow. The moment stretches on into that infinite bubble he’s used to feeling on the edge of death. His mind scrambles for words, selecting and discarding them desperately. Finally, he can only consider three that might be big enough to batter down Cas’s walls. “I love you,” he gasps. He pulls himself closer and kisses Cas as the blade hovers above his neck.

Everything in this warehouse is so cold but Cas’s lips are warm. When Dean presses his mouth to Cas he scares a breath from his nose. Cas doesn’t kiss back, but he doesn’t stab Dean either, so Dean counts it as a win and licks along Cas’s lips until they part and he can run his tongue along the soft inner lip. “I love you,” he breathes against his mouth. When they’d kissed before it had been chaste, lips closed and shaking. The kiss had been over seconds later, Cas pulling away and telling Dean he was leaving to find Lucifer. And then he left. And that was that.

Here, in the devastating silence of Cas’s mind, Dean deepens the kiss. The pain in his body builds like a swelling symphony but so does the pleasure. Cas’s lips jerk and suddenly Dean is getting kissed back ferociously, his mouth devoured. Next to them there’s a clatter as the angel blade falls from Cas’s fingers.

 * * * 

Castiel drops the blade and rests his hand along Dean’s neck before scratching his fingers into Dean’s hair. Dean’s lips are greedy. His tongue licks into Castiel’s mouth and Castiel moans with pleasure. Pleasure. It’s not the right sensation for this warehouse, where a thousand shades of Dean Winchester pled for their lives. None of them ever tried to kiss him. Naomi would never have imagined such a thing and Castiel kept his desire bottled up and buried so deep, no angel probe could ever find it. He barely found it, himself.

Dean is so warm. Castiel curls his other hand around Dean’s waist and pulls him in, wanting to feel every inch of his body. Dean hisses against him snapping Castiel out of the kiss ends abruptly. Between Castiel’s arms, Dean sways, then falls. “Dean!” Castiel kneels beside him where Dean is curled, clenching his side. Tentatively, Castiel reaches out his hand and strokes it down Dean’s cheek. He wills his grace to surge forward into Dean.

On the floor, Dean bleeds.

Castiel looks at his hand. “I don’t understand.” He stabbed Dean with an angel blade. That wound can be healed. He tries again and Dean shakes his head.

“Cas. Are you you?”

Castiel, for lack of a better answer, nods slowly.

“Good, ‘cause I’ve got…” Dean pauses a moment, his face screwed into a knot. “You’re trapped in some kind of angel prison. You gotta… You gotta let it all go.”

“I’m trapped in a prison.”

Dean lifts a hand and presses his finger to Castiel’s forehead and then trails it down to rest on his cheek. “Yep. Some kind of celestial mind prison. Metatron left it as some kind of trap. Do you remember raiding that bookstore? We were looking for archangel cuffs. You’ve been out cold ever since.”

“If I’m trapped, how did you get here?”

Dean smiles weakly. “Dream root tea, baby. Breakfast of champions.”

“Dean.”

“The trap runs on guilt, man. It runs on despair.” Dean looks around the warehouse and Castiel feels something inside of him whither. “I don’t know what this is all about and I don’t-“ He wheezes. “I don’t care. You gotta know that I forgive you, Cas. You gotta forgive yourself. It’s the only way out of this.”

“Metatron left behind a penance disc,” Castiel says slowly. “I’m trapped in a penance disc.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Dean,” Castiel shakes a little. “These are impossible to escape.”

“Don’t you say that, man.” Dean laughs a little. “Never say that to a Winchester. Shit goes down, man. It always goes down. But if there’s you and me. We can be stronger together. We always are. You gotta let yourself out of this.”

Castiel closes his eyes and presses his forehead against Dean’s. It feels so good, this closeness. It feels so good but there’s still a towering mountain of guilt pressing him down into nothing. “I don’t know how.”

“I don’t know either. Just do it. Do it, Cas.” Dean trembles again. “Listen, uh, this might be making it worse. But I kind of think I’m dying here.”

“Dean,” Castiel pulls back, his heart racing. “You can’t be. This isn’t real.”

“Fuckin’ dream root, man.”

“I don’t know,” Castiel’s voice breaks. Panic wraps its cold fingers around him and he closes his eyes, searching for clarity.

Dean whispers. “I love you, Cas. I have for a while. Now, I need you to stow your crap and save me, damn it.”

Castiel looks into Dean’s eyes and sees pain and blood. Terrible memories stretch between them like chains. For the first time since he became trapped, Castiel remembers the good ones as well.

* * * 

Dean comes to flat on his back with Sam yelling his name straight into his ear. “Jesus, Sammy,” he gasps and rolls to the side. He rolls into a pool of his own blood. Oh.

On the other side of the room there’s a metallic clunk and a flutter of fabric like the flapping of wings. “Dean!” Cas gasps as he scrambles to his side, knees slipping a little in Dean’s blood. He strokes his hand along Dean’s face with the barest hesitation, like he’s afraid he’s still trapped in his own head. Then Dean feels the familiar cool rush of Cas’s grace suffuse him, knitting him whole. A tense breath he didn’t know he was holding rushes from his mouth and he smiles up at Cas, searching for a flippant line to toss between the moment.

Cas covers Dean’s mouth with his own and they breathe together. They're both shaking. Dean runs his hand up Cas’s arm and circles around his neck, pulling him closer, deeper in to the kiss.

It’s only Sam’s awkward throat clearing that startles Cas away. He caresses Dean's temple and looks into Dean’s eyes steadily. “I love you, too” he tells him. Dean smiles. He feels encircled by it.

“Welcome back, Cas.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was supposed to be a 2,000 word short little thing. Ah well.


End file.
